As expected, President Donald Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on combating climate change. Trump says the treaty would hold back the nation’s economy, but experts have said that pulling out of an agreement predicted to add $26 billion to the GDP by 2020 may do more economic harm. It’s likely to cost the country clean energy jobs, and potentially spur retaliatory trade actions from other countries. (Former President Barack Obama echoed that warning in a statement on Thursday).
The U.S. may also lose political might to China, which will likely support renewables projects in developing nations. Still, individual American businesses are likely to continue to shift to increasingly cheap renewables, and to less polluting energy sources like natural gas over coal, for purely fiscal reasons.